Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) members staged protests outside Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) offices in different cities on Tuesday, condemning the alleged biased conduct of Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja.
Television footage showed demonstrations were held in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Gujrat and Faisalabad, among other cities.
Police were deployed outside the ECP office in Karachi ahead of the protest and three mobile vans were also present at the site as part of security arrangements.
According to a statement issued by PTI spokesperson Saddam Kumbhar, Opposition Leader in the Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Sheikh and other party leaders, including Firdous Shamim Naqvi, Bilal Ghaffar, Aftab Siddiqui, Raja Azhar and Saifur Rehman, were among the demonstrators.
The statement said Sheikh addressed the protesters on the occasion, saying: “We are here to make the shameless feel some shame.”
Without naming anyone, he added, “You were the election commission. Since when did you become the corruption commission.”
The PTI leader called the present times “black days”, further dubbing the ECP the “patron of turncoats”.
Meanwhile in Peshawar, chaos was witnessed as PTI members attempted to barge into the ECP office there. They were stopped by police deployed outside the ECP office’s gate.
PTI lawmakers from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, including Zahir Shah and Abdul Salam, were among the protesters, who raised slogans against the CEC, calling him biased.
They questioned as to why only the PTI’s funding was being investigated while other parties were not facing similar probes.
The protest ended in Peshawar around 1pm.
